Microsoft's Xbox has had its most successful week to date this year in Japan, capturing almost seven per cent market share following a price cut to the hardware and the launch of a Project Gotham Racing 2 bundle deal.

Sony Ericsson isn't the first to market with a PC Card that allows a notebook to connect to the Internet across a cellular network, but its GC79 has the novelty of also providing an 802.11b adaptor in the same card. The idea is simple: wherever you are, you can access the Internet wirelessly. When you're in range of a hotspot, public or private, and you can connect at up to 11Mbps. If you're out in the field, you can still make a wireless connection, this time using a GPRS or a slower GSM dial-up link.

Microsoft is holding up compensation claims from a quarter of million Californians in order to punish Lindows.com, and to coerce the class action plaintiffs "into siding with Microsoft against its Lindows competitor," according to a court filing seen by The Register. The document, filed on 21st November by Townsend and Townsend and Crew, lead counsel for the Californian class action consumers, points out that none of the claims being held up was actually filed via Lindows.com, yet Microsoft has held them "hostage" for over two months.

Faced with an ongoing patent battle in the US that threatens to place injunctions on its products, RIM is focusing heavily on Europe and has launched a tri-band full color BlackBerry PDA this week – only to find itself attacked by another intellectual property lawsuit, this time from a Luxembourg-based company.